The plan to ‘legalize’ graffiti

legalize graffiti

“Tony Blair has proposed tough new laws to stamp out graffiti. But London and other cities could “legalise” it with plans for giant graffiti murals.

Art is no stranger to controversy – just witness the latest furore over this year’s Turner Prize. But there’s one art form that is guaranteed to provoke even more of an outcry that a pickled sheep. Graffiti is illegal art and it’s everywhere in 21st Century Britain – on park benches and street signs, bus shelters and phone boxes, in car parks and train stations.

Writing on the wall, Turner Prize style

Councils spend millions of pounds cleaning up after graffiti vandals and Tony Blair has lumped graffiti with drugs and mindless violence as “bad symptoms” of modern society.

In a hard hitting speech at last week’s Urban Summit, Mr Blair announced plans to ban the sale of spray paints to under-18s.

But at the same summit, delegates heard an entirely different view. Instead of dismissing graffiti as vandalism, we should learn to embrace it, they were told by Kurt Iveson, an expert on urban issues.

We need to “legalise” graffiti by funding giant murals in prominent inner-city sites, he suggested.

“Programmes to clean up graffiti tend to be successful only in pushing graffiti writers to go elsewhere. It doesn’t get rid of the problem,” Dr Iveson told BBC News Online.

That lesson was learned in New York in the 1980s when city authorities began to target graffiti on subway trains, he says. The result was it just sprang up elsewhere.

Dr Iveson wants to see authorised graffiti walls, which are set up and run as ongoing-projects, for artists to exhibit their work. London could be first city in Britain to host such schemes.

The idea has the backing of Andrew Pelling, a Conservative member of the London Assembly who chaired the graffiti investigative committee earlier this year.

“Companies use graffiti imagery all the time to promote things to young people,” says Mr Pelling. “We have to accept that graffiti is part of their lives. So, I think graffiti walls are needed and, if they are going to mean anything, they need to be in prominent places.”

Tagging is now part of the urban landscape

The plan will be considered as part of the capital’s youth services provision.

But the idea is controversial. Many people find graffiti intimidating and some say the fact it is illegal is what gives graffiti artists a buzz.

Paul Nicholas, assistant chief constable of the British Transport Police, believes graffiti walls “legitimise” graffiti and serve as a “practising ground” for graffiti writers who go on to scrawl illegally.

Graffiti walls are not a new idea – a handful already exist around the country. But too often they are badly conceived, do little for the community and quickly become neglected.

Cleaning up costs millions of pounds a year

To work they need to be well planned and looked after, says Sonia Blair, who organises large-scale graffiti murals as public art projects.

“Graffiti projects are not like other community art. If you just march into an area and start painting over walls and tags [graffiti writers' signatures] a lot of people are going to be unhappy.”

Her company also organises mentoring, so young graffiti writers can develop under more experienced artists.”

By Jonathan Duffy
BBC News Online

Short URL: http://puregraffiti.com/art/?p=2884

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